[zardo]

I'm not sure if I would say LA must be learned first, certainly a study of vector spaces and inner product spaces, but not necessarily a complete course in LA. But you will understand each better by understanding the other. If you understand neither, this book covers them together. http://faculty.luther.edu/~macdonal/laga/

[auggierose]

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding out there what LA is. For example, LA certainly does not have to include the cross product. Just do introduce the basics of LA like vector spaces, linear mappings, bases, eigenvalues, singular value decomposition, etc. can easily take a semester to grasp properly (if you haven't had any exposure to that sort of thing before).